


Jonquil in December

by wldnst



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Storytelling, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:32:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wldnst/pseuds/wldnst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames tell stories about how they first met. Eventually, they tell the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jonquil in December

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eleveninches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleveninches/gifts).



> Written some time ago (though this fic is backdated, so) for eleveninches as part of [dream_holiday](http://dream-holiday.livejournal.com/); beta-read by gelbwax. 
> 
> 'Jonquil' in the title refers to a type of narcissus/daffodil; its flower meaning is 'return my affection.' At some point this made sense in my head.

There are stories that don’t happen in real life. Arthur calls his sister sometimes and they talk about it; she has a boyfriend she might marry. They live together in the same city they’ve both lived in for some time, the same city where they met at a bar when she went out with her friends from work and she hit on him ostentatiously, which was how Martha does most things.

Martha is Arthur’s inroad to ordinary, and he likes to put the phone on speaker and lay it flat on the cabinet in his hotel rooms while he sits on the bed and cleans his Glock. It’s nice to know there’s something ordinary in the world. That doesn’t mean he wants it for himself.

That’s what he tells himself when he and Eames are in the Zurich airport discussing where to go next. Discussing, heatedly, and then Arthur has the brief flash of a thought that if he and Eames were like Martha this wouldn’t be happening; he and Eames would probably live together already, and they wouldn’t be sniping about Prague and Mombasa like this because they wouldn’t need to, and the question of where they’d be flying to would already have been settled.

“You know,” Ariadne says, looking up from her book. “Most of us bought our tickets online and could be halfway through customs already.”

“Contrary to what you seem to think ‘one third of the team’ does not constitute ‘most,’” Eames says.

“I like flying standby,” Arthur contributes, and Ariadne huffs out a small snort.

“You would,” she says. “You know, you could both come to Vermont with me.”

“Vermont?” Eames asks. “And why would we want to go there?”

“Because then you can delay this conversation for at least a week,” Ariadne says. “And it’s almost solstice.”

“You _would_ celebrate solstice,” Arthur says, and Eames and Ariadne both pause to look at him.

“That was weak,” Ariadne says.

“It was weak when you said it, too,” Arthur mutters. “That was the point.”

Ariadne nods, as if to herself, then continues.

“I have access to a place in Vermont. It would be like a retreat. Team building.”

“We aren’t a team,” Arthur says, looking past Ariadne to the travelers swimming across the terminal behind her, caught in a sea of small black suitcases.

“We aren’t a team like you two aren’t dating,” she says, glancing between Eames and Arthur. “Just because no one ever calls it that doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t know what it is.”

“I think there was a double negative in there somewhere,” Arthur says.

“Arthur used to copy edit,” Eames supplies. They tell Ariadne these things all the time: Eames has a forgery in the Louvre, Arthur worked for Steve Jobs for a year after inception, Eames once shared pot brownies with a Prime Minister. This is the first time in his recent recollection that Eames has told her something true.

“So,” Arthur says. “Vermont, you say?”

“I already invited the Cobbs. I know you want to give your godson a Christmas present,” Ariadne says, grinning. “And Yusuf’s coming.”

That’s how they wind up in some part of Vermont Arthur couldn’t peg on a map--there’s a flight from Zurich to Logan International by way of someplace else, and then an extremely nondescript rental car that careens down winding, snow-covered roads with Ariadne behind the wheel, shouting along to Christmas music despite the fact that she claims not to celebrate Christmas. Eames takes shotgun so Arthur can sleep in the back, sideways on the bench seat with his knees cribbed into the back of Eames’ seat. The conversation hums around him, bordering on inanity but never quite reaching it. It’s like being on a job, but without a purpose, and it’s warm in the car and Arthur’s thoughts sink away a little.

This could be any one of a number of things, if Ariadne doesn’t drive them into a ditch first.

The cabin turns out to be larger than Arthur had expected, a post and beam with high ceilings and a big stone fireplace at the center. Ariadne glances back at them when she’s unlocking the doors using a key she retrieved from beneath a table out back.

“My family’s old money,” she says. “But I was kind of disowned. Except, you know, no one uses this house.”

“I don’t know, actually,” Eames says, and Arthur catches his eye and shakes his head slightly. If Eames is going to be touchy about family money, now is not the time.

“It’s lovely,” Arthur says, and Eames narrows his eyes because ‘lovely’ is a word Arthur only uses when he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Pick a room, boys,” Ariadne says when they’re standing in the great room. “Plenty of space for everyone.”

Eames quirks his eyebrow at Arthur and starts up the stairs, and Arthur glances at Ariadne in a way he hopes is apologetic before following.

“I’ll start a fire,” she says. “Take your time.”

“Thanks for this,” Arthur says, and Ariadne shrugs, grins a little.

“I’ll put on some loud music, too.”

“Shut up,” Arthur says. “We aren’t going to have sex if you’re down here expecting us to.”

“That’s funny,” Ariadne says. “Because I expect you two are having sex whenever I can’t see you.”

“Your voyeurism is disturbing.”

“I would call it a paranoia, really. I find it pays to be aware of things like this,” Ariadne replies. “But whatever, schematics, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Semantics,” Arthur corrects, and Ariadne just ignores him in favor of slumping a little lower on the couch, like she’s on the brink of falling asleep.

Arthur continues up the stairs, taking them a couple at a time, to a long hall. He eventually locates Eames in the room at the end. There’s a big bed with a thick, bright quilt and a picture window looking out over the peaks of spindly trees. The scene eventually fades into low clouds, low mountains, a wash of grey.

“Is Ariadne going to be a pain in the ass?” Eames asks. He’s sitting on the bed with his hands on his thighs, his back to the window.

“Probably no more than usual,” Arthur says, sitting down on the other side of the bed and beginning to remove his shoes. “I like her.”

“I don’t dislike her,” Eames says. “She’s just young sometimes.”

“She’s the same age we were when we ran inception,” Arthur says. “She just came of age in a different sort of dreamsharing, that’s all.”

It’s true--when Ariadne entered dreamsharing it was still a wilderness, but at least it had been mapped. It was different, earlier on; at once more cautious and more reckless. Between the pair of them Arthur figured they had the best and worst of that particular culture represented, and Ariadne was a refreshing break from it all, because even though now she had been in the business plenty long it still seemed like it was new to her, and the things she was afraid of--residuals of Mal, and limbo, and something that happened on a job in South Africa that she refused to talk about--were not the things Arthur and Eames were afraid of.

“We agreed that we’d avoid attachments,” Eames continues. And Arthur skirts along the edge of the bed until they’re sitting side by side.

“We did,” he agrees. “And yet we seem to have become attached.”

“And Ariadne is?” Eames asks.

“A good architect,” Arthur says. “Better than I ever was, better than Nash could ever hope to be. It’s not like I’m suggesting we have sex with her.”

“Mm,” Eames acquiesces. “And I do appreciate that. You know how I feel about sharing.”

“It’s like you didn’t learn anything in kindergarten,” Arthur says, putting his hands behind him on the bed. They’re both leaning back and their thighs are pressed together, and there’s a beat of silence and warmth. “Did you even go to kindergarten?”

“They didn’t teach me anything, and they didn’t teach you anything, either,” Eames replies, and then one arm is snaking around Arthur’s waist.

“I told Ariadne we wouldn’t do this,” Arthur says, and Eames just laughs into his mouth, a quick burst of breath that’s replaced by tongue. They fall together so easily, now, that Arthur slides into Eames’ lap with scarcely a thought, and Eames’ hands on his hips feel so familiar that it’s hard to believe they were ever absent.

“Don’t even pretend,” Ariadne says when they’re back downstairs. She’s awake, wrapped up under a blanket made of heavy wool, and the book she had at the airport has reemerged. There’s a fire in the grate, bright and blazing, and Arthur can feel the heat from across the room.

“We weren’t going to,” Eames says, sitting down on the couch besides her.

“So are you going back to the airport to get the others tomorrow?” Arthur asks.

“Nah, they’ve got their own rental and Yusuf has my cell number and directions. It’s a bit of a hike down there, though you slept through it.”

“I was tired,” Arthur says, stretching until his shoulder cracks. “You would be, too, if you’d just finished a job, but you two were just dicking around.”

“And you two were just fucking around,” Ariadne replies easily.

“It’s amazing we get any work done at all,” Eames adds, and the three of them sit together as if measuring that comment, but really their silence has more to do with the heat, which is at once stifling and comforting, dry and crackling though it is.

Yusuf and the Cobbs arrive the next afternoon, throwing the door open and letting in swirls of snow. They’ve brought gifts, which Arthur didn’t expect, but Cobb is almost tottering under the weight of a pile of wrapped presents. His expression shades guilty when Arthur looks at him askance, but then he nods towards Pippa and James as if to excuse himself.

By that time, James is more than halfway to throwing his arms around Arthur’s legs, and within the minute he’s squeezing him tightly around the waist.

“James, _god_ ,” Pippa drawls. “How old are you?”

“Arthur’s my _godfather_ ,” James says, turning and sticking out his tongue. “Don’t be jealous.”

“It’s good to see you both,” Arthur says, patting James on the back. “No hugs, Pippa? Would you rather we shake hands?”

Pippa gives him a withering look before sidling over to Ariadne. Somewhere in her early teens Pippa began to idolize Ariadne, dislike Eames, disparage James. Her response towards Arthur is general ambivalence. Cobb says it’s a teenage phase, probably one that’s closely tied to her deep rooted desire for a nose ring.

“New shoes,” Cobb says, sounding tired. “She made me give her an early Christmas present.”

“Pippa’s a b--” James starts, but Cobb cuts him off with a glare and a barked “James.”

“I got the new Call of Duty,” James says. “Everyone else had it already, so I beat it really quick. Want to see? I brought my Playstation.”

“You did, did you?” Eames is looking pleased, and that’s probably because of the copy of Skyrim in his suitcase. “Let’s get it connected, then.”

They withdraw to the living room, and Arthur is left standing with Cobb in the foyer.

“So,” Arthur says, slipping his hands into his back pockets. The stance feels awkward, but it’s been some time since he and Cobb last spoke, and their conversation was strange. “What have you been up to?”

“I actually wanted to discuss that with you,” Cobb says. “I think I may have found a backer for my business.”

“Of course you did,” Arthur mutters. “Is it Saito?”

Cobb lifts his shoulders in a way that loosely translates into yes, then sits down on the bench in the foyer to take off his shoes.

“We hired a friend of Yusuf’s--Maxwell--to do some tech development, and it’s going well,” Cobb continues. “I was thinking we could do a test run while we were all here.”

The business plan Cobb proposed to Arthur involved using dreamsharing for entertainment, like a videogame or something. Cobb, of all people, thought he could tone down the addictive elements, make dreamsharing as seemingly benign as turning on the television.

Cobb was not an unintelligent person, and he had, for nine years after inception, given up dreamsharing altogether. But he hadn’t been working at all, and he’d gotten restless, and he’d been talking to one of the other parents when he was waiting to pick up James after school, about L.A. and Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and then this.

“Janet thinks she’s figured out a way to cut some of the addictive properties,” Cobb says. “With a Somnacin alternative that’s not as immersive.”

“Janet?” Arthur asks.

“Janet Maxwell?” Cobb says, like Arthur should know this. It’s a sign of how little they’ve been in touch lately, because there was a time when Arthur would have known anyone involved in Cobb’s life simply because they ran in all the same circles, and Arthur was supposed to know everyone in Cobb’s life. “I mentioned her before--Yusuf worked with her a little, she’s great.”

Arthur will probably need to ask Pippa about this later, if she deigns to speak with him.

They spend that day inside, mostly, everyone settling into place. It reminds Arthur of holidays with his family when he was younger: he and Martha skirting around their older siblings and their parents, trying to determine how to navigate the new relationships that had suddenly descended upon their house. This is a lot like that, and so when Eames suggests they take a walk and Ariadne just shrugs and tells them to take the snowshoes instead of suggesting everyone go with, Arthur is quietly grateful. It’s good to get out with Eames. The air is pleasantly bracing, and everything smells like snow and pine, and there no demands on their attention or time, just trees and snow and the misting swirls of their own breath.

“Think we can make it to through this?” Eames asks. They’ve traipsed some distance on the slender track of a path leading into the woods that Ariadne pointed out to them from the doorstep.

“No worse than family Christmas,” Arthur says.

“You hate family Christmas,” Eames says. They reach the top of a small rise, and pause to consider the trees spread out before them.

“That’s not true,” Arthur says. It isn’t--there are some parts he hates. But he likes seeing Martha.

“I saw you talking to Cobb. He still working on that project?”

Arthur glances over at Eames, who is pointedly not looking at him, instead focusing on some unseen thing off in the distance.

“Yeah, I guess,” Arthur says. “He wants to test it with us.”

Eames nods.

“Yusuf implied as much. You okay with being a guinea pig?”

“I usually am,” Arthur says with a shrug. They’re avoiding the conversation they could be having, about Mombasa and Prague and what happens next, and the conversation--the beginning of it, the question--is on the tip of Arthur’s tongue when Eames grins at him unexpectedly, on the brink of laughter.

“Race you,” he says, and then takes off in a burst of laughter and powdered snow. Arthur catches him and tackles him eventually, and when they come back with their cheeks burnished red and snow in their hair the comments aren’t really _more_ than Arthur expected.

He’s kind of surprised at how pleasant it is, actually, to have Ariadne waggling her eyebrows at them, Yusuf blatantly amused, and Pippa looking miffed, like she thinks they’re behaving like children.

“What, did you have a snowball fight?” Ariadne asks.

“Arthur was questioning my aim,” Eames says. “Said I didn’t know how to do anything without a scope.”

“Of course,” Ariadne says wryly, pouring them mugs of hot chocolate. “You know, I’m not sure if what you have is a relationship, or a long-form disagreement. Bailey’s?”

Arthur and Eames both nod, and Ariadne pours out shots and tips them into the mugs before handing them each one.

“It’s disturbing, is what it is,” Pippa says. “Dad, this is my only model for a stable long-term relationship, I think you should be concerned.”

“You have other models,” Dom says. “And I don’t think a sixteen-year-old needs to be worrying about stable long-term relationships, anyway.”

“Just because you hate Bret--” Pippa mutters.

“Bret,” Eames says, setting down his drink. “Tell your uncles about him, then.”

“You’re not my uncle,” Pippa says. “Bret’s a girl.”

“Well tell us about her, then,” Eames says, settling down at the bar with his elbows on the counter.

“It’s my life,” Pippa says, slapping her hands on the table. “And it’s none of your business.”

“Pips,” Ariadne says. “Come on,

Pippa looks annoyed.

“I know Bret!” James says. “When she comes over Pippa locks her door and they make out in her room.”

“We do not,” Pippa says. “We just talk and listen to music, Dad.”

Cobb rubs is temples.

“They just talk and listen to music,” Eames echoes, quirking and eyebrow at Arthur. “Sound familiar?”

“No,” Arthur says.

“How long have you two been not-dating?” Ariadne asks. “Because sometimes your little winks and nods imply that it’s been disturbingly long.”

“Not that long,” Arthur says, shooting a glare at Eames.

“You should tell that story,” Ariadne says. “The one about how you two first hooked up or whatever. This.” She waves her hand vaguely in their direction. “I’ve never heard it.”

“Nor have I,” Yusuf says, coming down from upstairs, and now everyone is looking at the pair of them, Eames with his elbows still on the bar, cupped around the mug Ariadne gave him, and Arthur leaning back against the counter behind. Pippa mostly seems pleased to see that the attention has shifted off her, but the rest of them look genuinely interested. Cobb arches an eyebrow like this is a challenge.

“It’s not an interesting story,” Arthur says, kicking Eames in the ankle.

“You wound me,” Eames says dryly, then looks around at the room at large. “He wounds me.”

“You know,” Cobb says, falsely thoughtful. “This would be as good a time as any to try out our new tech. It works for storytelling.”

“Not if no one wants to tell the story,” Arthur says. “It’s not an interesting story.”

“You said that already,” Ariadne points out. “It just makes it sound like you’re trying to hide something.”

“We’ll do it,” Eames says. “It _is_ a boring story, though.”

When they’re moving to the living room, Arthur gives Eames a look he hope translates to ‘you’re doing it,’ and Eames nods succinctly.

Their love story is a two-man con, and if one of them doesn’t protest a bit then the story, when told, seems more questionable than it already is, and it’s always questionable because it’s always false. It’s easier this way.

Cobb’s device looks more like James’ Playstation 3 than a PASIV, which Arthur suspects is the point: make innocuous, make it familiar, make it sell. It is, he supposes, Cobb’s prerogative--but there’s something about this situation that seems more criminal than the actual criminal work they do. Arthur realizes his priorities may be out of whack.

He allows himself to be plugged in anyway. First it’s just the five of them gathered on chairs and couches around the coffee table, and then Pippa and James insist on joining because neither of them wants to be left with only the other for entertainment.

“Keep it PG,” Cobb says.

“Dad,” James hisses. “I’m thirteen.”

“PG-13,” Cobb amends. “Keep it PG-13.”

James still looks put-out when they go under.

They wake in an empty room, a sort of void.

“We’re working on a better user interface,” Cobb mutters.

“So what do I do?” Eames asks.

“If you can dream it, you can do it,” Cobb says. Then adds as an aside: “That’s our slogan.”

“I think it’s been used before,” Arthur mutters.

“You’re a forger,” Cobb says to Eames. “You should be able to figure it out.”

It takes a few moments for the dream to coalesce, but walls fall into place around them, and they’re looking into a hotel room. The bedspread is done in pastels, gauche, artificial brush strokes spread across a poly-blend canvas. Eames is in the room, staring at the wall, and running a poker chip along his fingers.

Arthur catches Eames’ eye, not sure if he likes the story that’s going to be told. Eames just winks.

“This was two years before Inception,” he starts.

> The job was in Ottawa. It was winter and cold, and Eames spent more than half of it in his motel room watching political TV, because it was easier than tailing anyone and there was a reason Eames lived in Mombasa and not fucking _Prague_ , for example.

“Uncalled from,” Arthur murmurs.

“I’m telling,” Eames says. “When you’re telling, you can gripe about humidity all you like.”

“This story is going to be boring, isn’t it?” Ariadne interjects.

They, as a group, have all gone slightly wallpaper-coloured.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

> So it was cold in Ottawa, right? And Eames spent half the job, more or less, in this motel room with its pastel bedspread, figuring out the mark, because it was cold outside and easier to watch CBC and CPAC than to go skulk around Parliament every day.
> 
> He was working with--shit--Jess and Manuel, back when they were still dating. Maybe this job was longer ago than he thought.
> 
> The job went well, anyway.

“This is boring,” Pippa interjects. Arthur suspects that, if she had gum, she would be snapping it.

“Fine,” Eames says. “We’ll skip this part.

> They’re still in the hotel room, where the projection of Eames is throwing something at the wall, a tennis ball. Arthur wants to point out that there’s really no point to have visuals for this story, and therefore Cobb’s device is stupid, but then the scene shifts slightly to a blank expanse of highway, with Eames behind the wheel of a nondescript green station wagon.
> 
> What you need to know about the job in Ottawa, if we’re going to skip that bit, is that they pulled it off, and then Jess and Manuel headed due south and told Eames to go anywhere but.
> 
> The other thing you need to know about the job in Ottawa happened after, when Jess and Manuel were heading south they ran into some interested parties and sang like birds. Actually, it was probably Manuel who did the singing, and that was probably why they broke up, but that is another story and one that Eames would probably need to falsify if he told it, because he doesn’t know it.
> 
> Regardless, they sang like birds, which brings us back to Eames, on a stretch of highway somewhere in the Yukon. He’d made plans to go west to British Columbia, angle up across the mountains towards the Yukon and meet a bush pilot he knew to hop north to Alaska and then across the Bering Strait to Russia. He had a job waiting in Japan, and Alaska was one of those places people were supposed to want to go, and so he figured he’d make the stop, but it all went to hell before he got there.
> 
> Eames has actually never been to Alaska, still.
> 
> It was cold and dark, to start, which maybe explained why Eames started to suspect he was being tailed.
> 
> There was only one road, really, and the pair of headlights jangling along behind him probably wasn’t a tail. That’s what he told himself when the lights sluicing through the cab first became disturbing, and he pulled over to let the car pass only they didn’t.
> 
> Which was something, wasn’t it? There was something a bit off about that, which is the only explanation as to why Eames actually swerved his car off the road at the next opening of flat land, figuring he could make a break across the tundra. The rental was, after all, a Subaru. It had four-wheel drive.
> 
> It was not his finest decision, but it was enough to make his pursuers shoot the rearview window, which made it apparent that Eames’ paranoia wasn’t entirely unwarranted. He would tell Yusuf about this when he got back to Mombasa, just to show him that he wasn’t as paranoid as Yusuf seemed to think.
> 
> The rear window shattered, crumbling like crushed ice. There are not many people who can make that shoot--hit a window precisely at the fracture point that makes the whole thing dissolve--and if that hadn’t been luck than Eames himself was--
> 
> In a bad place. If that wasn’t luck, Eames was in a bad place, especially since the terrain seemed to be giving the Subaru more trouble than he would’ve liked, and the headlights, high beams on, were giving shape to a landscape that wasn’t entirely hospitable.
> 
> There was the snow, for one thing. It was dry and powdery and gave way easily, but further ahead it had been sculpted into small dunes by some sharp knife of wind, and it didn’t look auspicious.
> 
> Which is why Eames threw the car into park and crawled from the frontseat towards the boot. The gearshift jabbed him sharply in the stomach as he went, but once he was there he had the rifle that he had bought for bears on the way up.
> 
> Well, it wasn’t really for bears.
> 
> And with the window out, at least he had something to shoot through.
> 
> The car behind him was a Landrover, or something like that--taller and blockier than Eames’ own, and it too had parked. Eames had rather hoped that his swift stop would’ve sent them spiraling into a donut, but that had been too much to hope for.
> 
> No one showed any signs of emerging, but the headlights were trained firmly on Eames’ tailgate, which meant the advantage was entirely on their end, and Eames figured he had about one shot.
> 
> Maybe more.
> 
> Probably just the one, though. He was considering this, trying to figure out if he could break the window or if it was possible it was bulletproof glass, when the doors opened, both at once, and two people emerged from the car.
> 
> They could’ve been siblings: both slim and dark haired, neatly dressed despite the fact that one of them had just shot out Eames’ window and they were on the tundra in December.
> 
> Of the pair, Eames recognized one of them.
> 
> “Mallorie Miles, as I live and breathe,” he called, and she met his gaze evenly.
> 
> “Mr. Eames, you know I prefer Mal,” she said, her voice pitched so it could barely be heard above the wind. “We’d like to offer you a job.”
> 
> “You shot out my back window,” he said, sitting up and peering out at them more fully. “To offer me a job.”
> 
> “We couldn’t have you get away,” she said mildly. “This is my pointman, Arthur.”
> 
> “Pleasure, I’m sure,” Eames said. Arthur smiled thinly.
> 
> “That I doubt,” he said. “Sorry about the window.”
> 
> “You aren’t really,” Eames said.
> 
> Arthur wasn’t, really.
> 
> “We can discuss the details in the car,” Mal said, shivering. “It’s frigid out here.”
> 
> “And my car?” Eames asked.
> 
> “Leave it,” Mallorie said. “I’ll pay for it.”
> 
> She didn’t.
> 
> Eames wound up in the backseat, leaning forward without his seat belt on so he could talk to both of them at once.
> 
> “Jess and Manuel said you had something in Japan,” Mal started. “I can make you a better offer.”
> 
> Arthur was looking staunchly ahead, along the southbound stretch of highway they’re driving. It was fairly apparent that he wasn’t as invested in getting Eames on this job as Mal was, and Eames was trying to place the name and the resentment in context, but he couldn’t, quite.
> 
> Arthur did not--the name felt like it _should_ ring some bells, but it didn’t. And the face wasn’t familiar at all, didn’t even look like a projection he’d seen in someone else’s dreamscape.
> 
> “Why?” Eames asked, instead. “What do you need?”
> 
> “Too many honest men in this business,” Mal said. “AWOL soldiers and the like. I need someone who hasn’t done a day of honest work in his life.”
> 
> She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
> 
> “I know all about you, Mr. Eames,” she said. “You’re a liar and a thief.”
> 
> “She really knows how to turn the charm on,” Eames said, more at Arthur than at Mal. Arthur nodded, eyes firmly fixed on the road. It occurred to Eames that he probably didn’t trust Mal’s driving.
> 
> “I’ll need more than that,” Eames said finally.
> 
> “You’ll get it,” Mal said. “We have two motel rooms a bit south. I imagine you and Arthur can share?”
> 
> She quirked and eyebrow, lips pressed firmly together.
> 
> “Of course you can. We’ll discuss it there.”
> 
> The hotel wasn’t much of a hotel--it was actually a bar with rooms upstairs, and it smelled like Eames’ grandmother’s house if it smelled like anything, which--it certainly smelled like something. The beds were all doubles that sagged in the middle, and there was a single washroom at the end of the hall. As soon as they arrived Arthur went to take a shower and Mal sat down in the single, stiff-backed chair in the room, and looked evenly at Eames.
> 
> “Okay,” she said. “Simple extraction, one level.”
> 
> “Here, or someplace warmer?”
> 
> “Prague,” Mal said. “So only slightly warmer. But I’ll pay you twice whatever the job in Japan paid, even if you lie about it.”
> 
> Eames lied about it. He took the job.

“And that was how I met Arthur,” Eames finishes. “And then we fucked.”

“ _Eames_ ,” Cobb hisses. “PG-13.”

“I think it isn’t until you say ‘fuck’ more than once that it’s knocked up to R,” Eames says. “Under the MPAA. So I conserved, yeah?”

“That was a terrible story,” Ariadne says. “I don’t think Arthur even said anything. You just objectified him.”

“Just because he didn’t include all the details for your voyeurism kink--” Arthur starts.

“I don’t believe it,” Pippa says suddenly. She’s standing slightly apart from them, in the space that has no faded from the second dingy motel to white void.

“You don’t, do you?” Eames asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Mom said you’re a liar and a thief,” Pippa says, challengingly.

“Your mom said he’s a liar and a thief in _his story_ ,” Arthur points out, because if they’re going to go down it’s not going to be at the hands of a sixteen-year-old girl.

“Well, I think that was the only true bit,” Pippa says. “Eames is a liar and a thief, and that story is bullshit.”

“Pippa,” Cobb says. He looks like he’s starting to get a headache. Arthur needs to talk to Eames about using a story that included Mal, though it is true that Arthur and Mal once found Eames in the Yukon--though that had been summer, not winter, in the brief flash of time when flowers were blooming on the tundra, and he and Eames had known each other already.

Arthur had enjoyed shooting out Eames’ back window, though. It proved a point he’d long been trying to make. Honestly, anytime someone told him he could demonstrate his marksmanship to Eames Arthur was there with bells on.

It was one of those things Arthur preferred to leave unexamined.

“Pippa,” Cobb continues. “They did run a job like that with Mal.”

Everyone goes silent, and Ariadne looks at Arthur and Eames a little uncertainly, like Cobb saying Mal’s name is going to bring the dream crashing down around them. It doesn’t any more than Eames’ projection of Mal went rogue and tried to shoot the observers, and that’s more of a surprise and a relief than Arthur would care to admit.

“I don’t believe you,” Pippa says. “That didn’t sound like a story about people who were going to fall in love, anyway. The first time they met? Doesn’t happen.”

“God, Pippa, be a teenage girl for once,” James says, crossing his arms. He adds as an aside to everyone else: “She does this with Disney movies. She says she’s never going to have a princess complex. She says no one needs a prince to save them.”

“It’s not a _fairy tale_ ,” Arthur says, surprising himself. “No one saved anyone.”

Eames has found his way to Arthur’s side somewhere in there, closer than Arthur thought he was, and suddenly his arm is around Arthur’s waist.

“Except for that time in Buenos Aires,” he whispers into Arthur’s ear. His voice is pitched low and humming. “But I won’t tell.”

Pippa is watching them with her eyes narrowed.

“I bet you guys met in some really embarrassing way like on OkayCupid or something,” she says. “Eames acts like such a badass--”

“Pippa, stop swearing,” Cobb sighs.

“Everyone else does,” she says, then continues: “But I bet he was actually a hacker, and he hacked Arthur’s account and then wooed him with the information he stole. And then he didn’t want to meet up, because of his terrible, terrible acne.”

“That makes no sense,” Arthur says. “That makes exponentially less sense than the story Eames just told, which you said was unrealistic.”

“There was a tundra car chase in the story Eames just told,” Pippa says, putting one hand on her hip. “You should’ve hit a reindeer. _Eames_ should’ve been run over by a reindeer, like grandma in that awful song--don’t sing it, James.”

“That _really happened_ ,” Arthur says, and he can hear his own voice straining. It did. He got frostnip on his trigger fingertips from hanging out the LandRover window with the stupid gun.

“I want to hear Pippa’s version,” Ariadne says from where she and Yusuf have been standing, both watching bemusedly, and Pippa beams at her.

“Fuck this,” Arthur says.

“Arthur,” Cobb says. “Everyone. _Stop swearing_. Pippa, you can tell your story if you keep it _PG_.”

“Dad,” James says. “I know swear words. Seriously, how old do you think I am?”

“ _That’s not the point_ ,” Cobb growls.

“He thinks that I drink soda fountains at the sockhop,” James mutters. “Or whatever.”

“Did you base this on the Matrix?” Eames asks, looking around the white space again. “Do you come in here and pretend to be Morpheus?”

Cobb actually does rub his temples now, squinting at an indeterminate location near the ground.

“Okay, okay,” Pippa says. “I’m going to tell this story, because Eames’ was obviously a dumb lie and my version is way better.”

“And _more false_ ,” Arthur says.

“More false implies the first version was false,” Pippa says triumphantly. “ _Ha_.”

Eames gives Arthur a little squeeze at the waist.

“Go on, then, Pippa,” he says. “Show us what you got.”

“Don’t _distract_ me,” she says.

Pippa closes her eyes and furrows her brow in a way that bears an uncanny resemblance to her father, and then a room slowly begins to take shape. It’s a disaster--a terrible cave of a room, with posters peeled from the walls and a computer surrounded by the entrails of meals. Arthur wants to ask Pippa who she thinks they are, that one of them would live in this _place_ , but then she blinks slightly and the scene shifts.

“I changed my mind,” she says.  “You aren’t telling a story?” Eames asks, and Arthur can tell he’s trying not to betray his relief.

“No,” she says. “I’m telling a different one.”

They’re in what appears to be Pippa’s imagined vision of a TV studio now, judging by the cameras wheeling around and the fact that Eames is standing on a makeshift stage, wearing some sort of _safari_ outfit.

“Pippa,” Arthur says. “I like the shorts.”

“Oh god, _shut up_ , I don’t want to know,” Pippa mutters, and Eames raises and eyebrow at Arthur.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “So Eames is like a TV personality, right? Like Jack Hanna or Steve Irwin or the Kratt brothers.”

> And Arthur was in Africa studying lions or something like that. Or--not lions, actually. Uh, monkeys. In South America.
> 
> So Arthur was in South America studying monkeys. Spider monkeys, the skinny ones at the zoo with tails as long as their arms, and arms as long as their legs. He was doing something inside, DNA analysis, but he had to be in the Amazon because otherwise the DNA would degrade or something. So Arthur was in the Amazon, actually, studying spider monkey DNA, and he had a lab in the middle of the rainforest and spent all of his time complaining about how hot it was, because Arthur hated it when it was hot out and stuff.
> 
> The lab was climate controlled, and Arthur spent most of his time there centrifuging DNA samples. There was someone else--a woman named Mal--doing most of the work outside, in the rainforest, and then Eames and his TV show decided to do a special about her research, because it was really interesting.
> 
> Eames brought a film crew with him, a proper one with several people whose names are completely irrelevant to this story. What is relevant is that Eames did his one video editing, and he also appreciated the climate controlled climate of Arthur’s lab. He’d go there at night to parse through the footage he’d taken with Mal during the day, and Arthur would go to the lab then, too, because he didn’t trust Eames not to mess with his monkey genetic material. They had a conversation about it, actually, but it pretty much went like--Arthur said Eames couldn’t use the lab, and Eames said he needed it, and then the field station director or whomever said they needed to let Eames use it, blah, blah, blah.
> 
> The field station director was named Dom, actually. Dominic Cobb. He was married to Mal, and they were expecting their first child. She was going to be born in the Amazon, and have a pet monkey before she was five--

“Pippa,” Ariadne says, which makes sense because no one else will and yet someone needs to say something. “This isn’t about Arthur and Eames, is it?”

“It could be,” Pippa says primly.

“And it doesn’t have anything to do with reality, does it?” Ariadne asks.

“It does,” Pippa says. “If this is all a dream, and when we think we’re awake it’s a dream, too.”

She looks around the dream space, and there’s something sharp and challenging in her eyes, a fragment of her mother’s ice.

“Who’s to say what’s real?” she says. “Maybe we’re three levels deep, right now. Maybe we actually live in Limbo.”

“Philippa,” Cobb says softly. “Pippa. We’ve talked about this.”

“Maybe totems only work because we think they do,” she says, sinking the white ground. “Because you _dreamt them_. Maybe mom’s alive, and you’re all scientists, and Eames is a TV personality.”

It’s Ariadne, who’s watching Pippa with close, sharp eyes, who drops to the ground beside her and places a hand on her back, holds it steady, and waits. Arthur feels like he should turn away, or do something, though he isn’t sure what. He finds himself looking across the circle at James, who looks quietly stricken--he hadn’t been aware, then, though Arthur isn’t entirely sure of what: whether he wasn’t aware of the reasons for his mother’s death, or of Pippa’s quiet conviction that maybe Mal was right, and so Arthur goes to him, sliding across the void dream space until he’s standing in between James and Eames, and Ariadne is still on the ground with Pippa, who is crying, now.

“Pippa,” Ariadne says. “Pippapippapippa.”

“I know she’s probably not,” Pippa says through a hiccupy sigh. “But what if she was?”

“Pippa,” Eames says, and he sounds both quieter and more thoughtful than he sometimes is. “You have to trust us, Pippa. Sometimes you know what’s real, and sometimes you trust your totem--your mum, things changed for her. An accident happened.” Eames glances at Cobb. “But we try to find something real and hold on to it.”

Eames glances at Arthur, here, and Arthur can feel a blush rising in his cheeks, because, yeah, okay, his totem got compromised so he started using Eames, who is so mutable in dreams, and who Arthur knows well enough to catch any permutation.

It doesn’t entirely fit with their model of avoiding attachments, and Arthur has a new die, weighted differently, that he keeps it around in case they’re separated, but mostly--he uses Eames.

Pippa is wiping at her eyes, now, and they’re drippy and red.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I don’t--we were just talking about mom, and Eames mentioned her first, and this whole thing--I’ve never really _seen her_ like that, you know?”

Cobb offers her a hand, pulls her to her feet, and hugs her.

“Never apologize,” he says. “I’ve missed her too--” he laughs, slightly self-deprecatingly, “--you don’t need to apologize. You know you can talk to me about this anytime you like. You too, James.”

He reaches out to James and spools him in, and it’s a quiet, warm moment, and it occurs to Arthur that maybe this should be taking place on firm ground instead of in a dream, but maybe it doesn’t matter.

“I still want to know what really happened,” Pippa says when the family pulls apart, squinting her puffy eyes. Cobb glances down at her, and then up at the group at large.

“I wasn’t going to do this,” he says after a moment. “Let the record show that I wasn’t going to do this.”

“What, dad?” James asks.

“I know how they met,” Cobb says. “I know how Arthur and Eames met, and I’m going to tell you, right now, because my daughter just cried.”

The thing is, Cobb might actually know. Arthur is staring at him, and he sees Eames’ eyes flicker from his face to Cobb’s, like he’s trying to measure the likelihood that Cobb is telling the truth.

Pippa is grinning a little wryly, and while Arthur doesn’t doubt that the crying is real, and he almost wants Cobb to say it just to distract her, but he can’t help but feel he’s getting played like a fiddle by a sixteen-year-old.

“Arthur and Eames met in high school,” Cobb says.

“Don’t be ridiculous, dad,” Pippa says. “Eames is _British_.”

“It’s no less ridiculous than your story was going to be, Pips,” Cobb says.

“Don’t call me that,” Pippa mutters.

“And it wasn’t a dream,” Cobb finishes. He doesn’t look triumphant, though he may be quietly pleased. Everyone else stands there in silence, but Arthur can tell from Ariadne and Yusuf’s faces that they’re considering this.

“That actually explains some things,” Ariadne says, looking between Arthur and Eames. “Like the time you both took off to go to a high school reunion. I thought that was a euphemism for some sort of weird role-playing.”

Cobb looks exasperated.

“Ariadne, aren’t you uncontrollably nosy? They said they were going to a high school reunion and you didn’t say ‘Jinkies’ and get to the bottom of that?”

“He thinks I’m Velma,” Ariadne says, then turns to Yusuf and repeats herself. “He thinks I’m Velma.”

“Does that means he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for meddling?” Yusuf asks.

“I knew you were liars,” Pippa says.  

“The chase in the Yukon _really happened_ ,” Arthur repeats. “It’s just not how we met.”

“So, were you already sleeping together?” Pippa says, and when Cobb scowls at her she just says “What?! Everyone’s wondering.”

“Kind of, yeah,” Ariadne says.

“I’m not a stalker, but yes,” Yusuf says. “This information is relevant.”

“No,” Arthur says at the same moment Eames says, “Yes.”

It’s Ariadne who narrows her eyes now, peering them at them from thin slits.

“You lost your virginities to one another,” she says, and then glances pointedly at Cobb. “ _Jinkies_.”

Arthur refuses to discuss this in mixed company. He refuses to discuss this at all. Eames gives him a look that roughly translates to ‘ _Told you she’d be annoying_ ,’ rolling his eyes a little in Ariadne’s direction.

“It’s none of your business,” Arthur says, a little primly.

“Dad, you told me no one gets together with their high school sweethearts,” Pippa says, twisting to look at Cobb.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they were _sweethearts_ , exactly,” Cobb says. “Your mother knew the story better than I did.”

It’s Cobb’s quiet fondness for Mal that breaks Arthur, there. Something about the way he says ‘your mother,’ instead of her name, and the expression on his face, which seems sad in a comfortable way, sadness worn like an old coat, and it occurs to Arthur that he hadn’t trusted Cobb to come to terms with things, but maybe he has.

“I’ll tell it,” Arthur says.

Eames looks as surprised as anyone.

“No sex,” Arthur says to the general populace of the dream space. “But yeah, about the virginity thing.” He finds his hand swimming through the air to meet Eames’, and it’s not so much for reassurance as to demonstrate something, that this is real and has been for a long time. “Yeah, alright? Now you know.”

“Oh god, it was in the back of a car,” Ariadne says. “Wasn’t it? That’s _adorable_.”

“Please never apply that word to me again,” Eames says.

“Eames was the captain of the soccer team,” Arthur begins. “I was a copyeditor for the school newspaper--”

> Eames actually transferred in their junior year, mid semester. His mother was a reporter who had gotten a gig as a foreign correspondent in Washington, and so suddenly the class at Arthur’s private Maryland high school was up one student, and kind of quietly stoic boy who looked like he had finished puberty well before anyone else had.
> 
> Arthur didn’t actually realize this until it came up in the journalism classroom one day after school. They’d ordered in a pizza--they did that, sometimes, if they sold enough ads or their advisor was feeling generous. That time it was the latter, and the pizza was the cheap kind with rubbery cheese, and Arthur was mopping the grease off his slice while discussing his odds of getting into West Point with his friend Ralph when Martha came in. She and Arthur were twins, and Ralph had a misguided crush on her based almost entirely on the fact that she acknowledged him in social situations.
> 
> “Oh, good, it’s a pizza day,” she said, opening the box they’d left on a desk in the middle of the room.
> 
> “Newspaper staff only,” Arthur mumbled around a bite of his own pizza, and Martha gave him a withering glance.
> 
> “Never stopped me before,” she said. “Don’t be a dumbass.”
> 
> Ralph snorted a little, then blushed when Martha glanced at him.
> 
> “Also, I know you always make sure there aren’t any olives because I don’t like them,” Martha continued.
> 
> “I don’t like olives, either,” Arthur said. “You know that.”
> 
> “‘Cause you’re twins,” Ralph said, and then both Arthur and Martha turned to peer at him uncertainly.
> 
> Ralph was socially unfortunate. It was a fact about him, equal in standing to the fact that his hair was dishwater blond and his eyes were blue, because he wore his social discomfort on the surface of his skin with his freckles. He wrote music reviews, mostly, and was something of a savant when it came to locating interesting records, but otherwise. He went on to become a producer of some sort, notoriously persnickety and unfortunate and brilliant.
> 
> “So,” Martha said around a mouthful. “You meet the new kid? He’s in our year. _British_. It’s quite the thing.”
> 
> “The thing?” Arthur asked.
> 
> “The _thing_ ,” Martha repeated. “To gossip about. But I realize your precious paper is always a week behind the rumor mill--except when it comes to music, yes Ralph--so I’m not surprised you weren’t aware.”
> 
> “Thanks Martha,” Ralph mumbled.
> 
> “Martha,” Arthur said. “I don’t particularly care.”
> 
> “Particularly is the clincher, though, isn’t it?” Martha asked, inspecting her nails. “I hear he’s in junior gym on Tuesdays.”
> 
> “Great,” Arthur gritted out. “I’m sure I’ll see him then.”
> 
> So Arthur was set against Eames before he even met him, simply by virtue of the fact that Martha saw fit to gossip about him. Martha didn’t tell Arthur things without reason, and it became apparent that Eames was the sort of person who exasperated Arthur, and, well, that was that.
> 
> They were on the archery unit in gym, and the bows were almost as long as Arthur was tall, which was embarrassing to begin with. He made up for it by being the best marksman in the class--Arthur had always been a good shot. The only thing his father liked about him as his aim.
> 
> The thing about Eames was, Eames was better, and he was larger besides--he had the kind of muscles Arthur had never really been able to develop, and when he drew back the bow you could see the cadence of it in his shoulders, and when he released it hit the target _every. fucking. time._
> 
> What made it worse, though, was that when Arthur hit the target it was a sort of shameful thing, like he was a teacher’s pet or a show-off or a kid who wrote for the newspaper showing up jocks. When Eames did it just--was, and incomprehensibly, everyone else liked him. Arthur’s only vindication was that Eames didn’t seem to care for him much, either, judging by the amount of time they spent sniping at one another in the locker room.
> 
> In retrospect, Arthur really could have been a little more perceptive about the whole thing. Maybe he would have been, if he hadn’t spent so much time staring at the innards of his gym locker while slipping in and out of track shorts and old t-shirts while staunchly ignoring Eames’ barbs.
> 
> Actually, truthfully, ignoring Eames’ barbs was never really an option.
> 
> “You might want to consider glasses,” Eames said. “Because I’m not completely sure you can see the target properly.”
> 
> “What’s that? I’m sorry, your accent--are you from Australia?”
> 
> “Weak, Arthur,” Eames said, slamming his locker shut. “I know you can do better than that.”
> 
> And then Eames was gone, and Arthur was blinking at the gills of the grey-green locker in front of him, and wondering if he really could do better than that, and at what.
> 
> It actually became a thing. For years Arthur had intellectually distanced himself from his performance in gym class, pulling himself back from most of the team sports because these people were neither his friends nor really his peers, and releasing himself fully into sport felt like giving them something they didn’t deserve, and it would be more shameful to try and fail than never to try at all.
> 
> But with Eames there was a point to prove, suddenly, and it had nothing to do with intellectual superiority and everything to do with the burden of proof, which had suddenly fallen to Arthur, because something about Eames made Arthur want to prove himself to him. Until the archery unit wound up Martha would smile sardonically at him whenever he went to out to the range to practice, and then when they switched units, and Arthur started going to the weight room early in the morning and Martha just shrugged and said she could catch a ride to school with Emily at a reasonable hour.
> 
> It got worse when Arthur and Eames started talking, half by accident. It was just the usual things--idle questions, but Arthur was surprised to find himself answering them seriously, actually saying how he was, what classes he was concerned about and what events he was eager for, and then they’d be sitting on the bench in the locker room until they were just on the brink of being late for their next classes, and their jabs began to lack bite. When Thomas Nowak said it was starting to look a little gay Arthur pretty much ignored him because he was already aware that, yes, he spent half their conversations staring at Eames’ forearms, just because they were there, looped around his knees, and they were aesthetically appealing. They were the sort of forearms--they were just nice arms.
> 
> Okay, more than that. But Thomas Nowak was the one who said it was a “little gay.” Well, he used different words, but that was the idea. He spat it out when he was leaving the locker room and Arthur and Eames were still there, in their street clothes, discussing the relative merits of American breakfast cereals, and after that Arthur started feeling a bit self conscious about the whole thing, or worried Eames might feel self conscious, because Eames had a sort of reputation that was cooler than Arthur’s by a good few notches, and hanging around the guys’ locker room after class talking was not something that was done.
> 
> Mostly because the guys’ locker room smelled like ass, if we’re being frank. But being gay wasn’t really something that was done, either. So there was a week or so where their conversations where somewhat stilted on Arthur’s end, and he tried not to think about whether Eames would be able to pick him up wholesale and pin him against the tiles in the locker room showers.
> 
> And then Eames pinned Arthur to the ground during a field hockey match and Arthur found a boner pressed into his thigh.
> 
> So.

“Arthur,” Cobb says, jerking his head in James’ direction.

“ _Dad_ ,” James says. “God. I know what a boner is.”

“This is inappropriate,” Cobb says. “And possibly sexual harassment.”

“You make it sound like I got a stiffy on purpose,” Eames says. “Picture this: it’s spring, okay? And the fields were muddy as shit, and Arthur’s proper _writhing_ , and he used to wear these white shirts and obscene little gym shorts, and the mud, alright?”

“We get it,” Yusuf interjects, looking bored. “You two were horny teenagers.”

“Yes,” Arthur says. “And no.”

> Arthur left the locker room fast that day. He actually didn’t bother changing--he went out to his car and set in the front seat in his muddy gym clothes with his knees wedged up against the steering wheel. He figured it wasn’t running so much as saving them both from the embarrassment of having to discuss it, because it was the sort of thing that merited discussion but also--maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Eames was imagining Arthur was a chick. Maybe Arthur was getting mud on the upholstery and skipping class, which he never did, but that was another discussion altogether, because he actually was getting mud on the upholstery and skipping class, and the rest of it--the rest of it was speculation. He knew that, fully, but he couldn’t face the possibility of those possibilities being real, because he had _liked_ it.
> 
> Which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. He liked the weight of Eames, Eames’ hands on his shoulders, the bright flecks in Eames’ eyes, Eames knees on either side of his thighs, the way their hips almost touched, almost slid together.

“You two are the worst,” Yusuf mumbles. “Seriously, the worst. Spare us the details, please.”

“You wanted to hear this,” Arthur says, looking around the dreamspace. “Someone wanted to hear this. Someone wanted truth, didn’t they? And if honesty is going to make you feel uncomfortably voyeuristic--seriously, just hear me out, and then we’ll be done and you can get trashed and try to forget if you want that, and also you can never ask about this story again.”

“I can’t get trashed,” James says. “I _can never forget_.”

So maybe Arthur lightens up on the details a little, because James is his godson and he doesn’t want to scar the kid. But the fact is--was--is--that all the things he hated about Eames when they first crossed paths, all the things that pissed him off and made him feel strangely inferior, were precisely the things that made him want to lift his hips out of the mud that little bit until their bodies were pressed fully together, were exactly the reasons that he spent a significant amount of time in his car alternately thinking and not thinking about what had happened during that unfortunate field hockey game. Arthur had never given much thought to the rhyme or reason of his attractions before, but the fact was that Eames was _it_ , Eames was everything. Arthur knew that when he was seventeen with a preternatural clarity, it just took him a long time to accept it. It seemed like there should be more, but then there was Eames, strong and competent and sharp and beautiful and criminal.

“So I stewed in my car for awhile,” Arthur continues after a moment.

> Eames didn’t show up at his house or anything--this isn’t that sort of story. What happened instead is much more straightforward, and that’s that Arthur went home and told Martha, lying on his back on the floor of her bedroom, staring at the ceiling and the glow-in-the-dark stars they’d pinned there years before, and Martha said, in her simple way:
> 
> “Just talk to him.”
> 
> Which is exactly what Arthur expected her to say, and then the only problem was that they didn’t have gym class the next day, and Arthur rarely saw Eames on days when they didn’t. They didn’t share any other classes or lunch periods; Arthur managed to suppress the urge to wonder whether Eames was avoiding him and just wait it out, and then the next day they were on the same team for field hockey, at least, and Arthur took his time in the locker room afterwards and when Eames seemed to be going pointedly slower Arthur just sat down on the bench--their bench--and waited.
> 
> “You skipped out on me the other day,” Eames said without turning around.
> 
> “It made sense at the time,” Arthur said.
> 
> “So,” Eames said. “Things make sense now?”
> 
> “No,” Arthur said.
> 
> And then he waited. Eames still hadn’t gotten his shirt on--he had stopped dressing when Arthur sat down, and now it looked like he was caught in amber, halfway between being the person he was in the hallway and the person he was in the locker room, talking with Arthur. It had never occurred to Arthur to bifurcate the two, because he so rarely saw Eames outside of gym, but the fact that Arthur never saw Eames outside of gym--that right there made the two people different.
> 
> “Arthur,” Eames said, turning around, finally, and settling down on the bench with both his feet planted flat on the floor.
> 
> “Arthur,” Eames repeated, like he was testing it. “Sorry about that. But--I can’t say it’s something I want to apologize for.”
> 
> “Explain that,” Arthur said. “Explain why you don’t want to apologize.”
> 
> “Because I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Eames said. “And I’d keep you there a little longer. And I’d kiss you, because I’d like to know what that feels like.”
> 
> That was, in all honesty, all Arthur really needed.

“Are we done now?” Pippa asks. “Can I open my eyes?”

“You didn’t want to see my hot piece of seventeen-year-old ass?” Eames asks.

“Ugh, no,” she mutters. “You’re like my _uncle_. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a eunuch.”

“Apparently not,” James chimes in, and Cobb frowns.

“I think,” he says. “We’ve had enough for the night.”

And the others nod, somewhat blearily, and Ariadne catches Arthur’s eyes and gives him a little jerk of her chin, whether in approval or affirmation Arthur’s not sure. It doesn’t make sense to him--Ariadne wanted to hear the story, and he doesn’t understand why that was so important.

It’s only when they unplug from Cobb’s device that Arthur allows himself to think about those stories. He remembers chasing Eames down in the Yukon, and that was after they’d broken up because people didn’t stay with their high school boyfriends, it just didn’t happen, it was implausible that they had already met the people they were best suited to be with. He remembers, too, missing chemistry for the second time that week because of Eames, though the second time--was better than the first, he’ll say.

They’d broken it off during Arthur’s first year at West Point, and Eames had said he thought the military was shit, anyway, and America smelled like tarmac and fry grease, and then he’d fucked off to England to eat fish and chips or whatever. That was how Arthur had imagined it, anyway--Eames, somewhere grey, stuffing his face with fish and chips and then making out with someone who had crooked teeth and a monocle.

Arthur would be the first to admit that at eighteen he wasn’t particularly cultured, no matter how much he wanted to be.

He heard from Eames periodically, scrawl on postcards, most of which were lies. It was only later that Eames would tell Arthur what had happened in between then and the present, how he had become a thief because why not?, and then the possibilities of dream sharing had opened up for him, and then Arthur had shot out the rear window of his rental car somewhere in the Yukon, when Eames was going to meet with a bush plane operator to get to Alaska, from there to Japan. Arthur had been shocked when he’d turned up a picture of the forger Mal wanted, and that was part of the story, too.

They’ve been on and off since then, always on the brink of a completely committed relationship but never quite reaching it, and suddenly, now, in this moment, when Arthur looks at Eames as he flutters awake, and then at Pippa, who wishes she had a mother, and all the things Arthur has wished for and it seems ridiculous that he’s not taking this, this one thing, because it’s _too good_ , because he doesn’t believe it can be real, because it’s something that doesn’t happen in real life.

They don’t live in real life, not completely. They live in dreams.

It’s hard to believe that it’s taken him this many years to realize that his entire relationship paradigm doesn’t make sense.

Everyone is looking at one another like they aren’t sure what happened here, now, and they’re quiet as they disperse and go to the their bedrooms. Arthur spends an inordinately long time brushing his teeth, staring at his own face in the mirror, wondering if he’s always this pale or it’s just a temporary thing, and then Eames calls him back, reels him in.

Arthur and Eames have had a lot of sex. It’s a simple fact: they had sex once, memorably, in the locker room of their high school gymnasium, which smelled like Axe and teenage boy, during a class reunion neither of them had actually wanted to attend. Arthur’s back pressed was against slick tile and Eames hissing things in his ear about how hot he’d looked in gym shorts and mud. They’ve had sex in dreams and out of them; they’ve had sex in both of their own beds, several motel rooms beds, and once in the attic room of Eames’ mother’s house; they had sex several times in a yurt in Mongolia and exactly once on the beach, after which they both decided they didn’t like the places sand could wind up.

The point is that the simple act of sex should be familiar by now, ordinary, maybe on the brink of dull. Just the two of them and a normal sized bed--not like that small, sagging thing in the hotel in Whitehorse before they left the Yukon, where fitting together was like a particularly terrible game of Tetris and Arthur woke up with Eames’ knee wedged between his legs--no danger, no pressure at all.

It should be familiar, but it isn’t. Every time Arthur finds himself staring at the mole on Eames’ hip like it’s a revelation, feels a sudden, possessive heat curling inside his chest when he sees the curve of Eames’ ass, the easy strength he carries in his biceps, thighs, shoulders. It’s the sort of thing they write stories about, the sort of thing Pippa makes fun of, spanning nations and continents and more years than it reasonably should.

All this maybe explains why Arthur stares for a minute that stretches on to several when Eames starts to strip down that night, in the big room at the end of the hall. They’ve turned out the lights already but there’s a full moon, hanging heavy and low in the picture window, and when Eames peels off his shirt his bare back is traced silver.

“What?” he asks, glancing up. “See something you like?”

“Every fucking day,” Arthur says, more fiercely than he’d intended.

“Mmm,” Eames hums, crossing the room in a few long strides. “You’re wearing more clothes than I am. Is this going to be like the time you were the schoolmaster and I was--”

“No,” Arthur says, blinking. He doesn’t want it to be like that at all, he wants it to be just them. He leans forward. Eames is broader than he is, but they’re of height, and their noses touch in what he and his sister used to call an Eskimo kiss, their eyes meet in the dim light.

“I want you,” Arthur says, hissing a little through his teeth. “To carry me to that bed, and fuck me like it’s our goddamn wedding night, and we’ve never fucked before.”

“Our goddamn wedding night?” Eames says. “Is it damned because there’s no way either of us is a virgin?”

Arthur has always been a little quicker than Eames, if it’s going to come down to that, and now he snakes his arms around Eames’ neck and pulls their mouths together so fast their foreheads bump, harder than he intended but not hard enough to distract him from his mission, which is primarily to make Eames shut the fuck up, but secondarily to get Eames to carry Arthur to bed and undress him and fuck him six ways to next Sunday. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and the primary mission is secondary.

It pretty quickly doesn’t matter much at all, because Eames is kissing Arthur with a concentrated intensity, like he’s trying to memorize this and this moment, and the moonlight is slithering in between them and casting long shadows under Eames’ eyelashes, his cheekbones.

“Hello,” Eames says when they pull apart.

“Hello,” Arthur replies, and then Eames is cupping his ass and lifting him up, and Arthur lifts his legs and loops them around Eames’ waist so their hips slot together the way they would when they were seventeen and Eames still thought Arthur was fragile. Eames dips his head in for another kiss even as he spins the pair of them around and deposits Arthur on the bed, pressing his hands into the quilt on either side.

“Like we’ve never fucked before?” Eames asks, leaning in so close his lips brush Arthur’s even as he’s speaking. “Like I’ve never seen you before? Or undone all--these--buttons?”

Eames reaches for the top button of Arthur’s oxford, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger before flicking it open and peeling the collar back from Arthur’s shirt.

“Never seen your collarbone?” he asks, bending forward to suck the place where it juts out, just below Arthur’s shoulder. His fingers are already toying with the second button, and then he dips his head in and pulls at it with his teeth until it pops off.

“Fuck, Eames--” Arthur hisses.

“Don’t complain about the shirt,” Eames says. “Don’t complain about the shirt, I know you’re an expert at reaffixing buttons.”

“God, no,” Arthur says, slipping his hand to the back of Eames’ neck, threading his fingers through the hair at his nape and then pulling his head up again.

“I want to see you. I haven’t seen you before, either,” Arthur says. “Your fucking magnificent shoulders. Or your cock.”

“You haven’t have you?” Eames asks, glancing down at his briefs, which are so thin that Arthur really should’ve thrown them out for him, already. “Well, I think you’re beginning to get an idea.”

“I want it in me,” Arthur says, looking Eames in the eye.

“Well we need to get you out of your trou, then, don’t we?” Eames asks. “Patience is a virtue.”

“Not one you have,” Arthur says, and then he bites Eames’ lower lip.

It makes Eames’ arch his back and moan, which is more or less the response Arthur had anticipated, because this is getting too close to role playing for his liking, right now, and the point is that it’s new and old, fresh and familiar, _every time_.

“We’re going to ruin this quilt, aren’t we?” Arthur says suddenly, and Eames’ lips quirk into a wry grin as he hooks his thumbs through the beltloops on Arthur’s pants.

“Probably,” he says, tugging, and Arthur lifts his hips slightly and then he’s bare-assed on the blanket, and Eames is grinning at him.

“Pretty decent Solstice present,” he says, collapsing onto the bed and pulling Arthur on top of him. “If you’re going to insist on doing presents for Solstice.”

“Pretty decent?” Arthur asks, and Eames laughs, cupping his hands around Arthur’s ass and sending tremors of laughter though his chest.

“You know what I mean,” he says, and slips a finger in, one and then two, and when Arthur inhales a little too quickly Eames says, “You like that? You want a little more?”

And that’s pretty much what happens, Arthur likes this, a little more, a little more-- until they’re lying, spent, on top of the bedspread.

“We’re both virgins so we didn’t need condoms, right?” Eames whispers to Arthur, and Arthur shoves him in the shoulder a little.

“Does this mean you want to get married?” Eames asks, and Arthur studies the play of light on the ceiling.

“No,” he says. He thinks about adding, _Aren’t we already?_

“How do you feel about the Mediterranean?” he says instead. The idea surprises even himself. “Coastal Croatia or somewhere. As a compromise.”

“You’d move for me?” Eames asks. “I’m honored.”

“Only if you’d move for me,” Arthur says, twining their fingers together. “But, you know, I figure we need to do something, eventually. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

Eames hums a little, pressing his lips into Arthur’s neck.

“It has been a long time, hasn’t it?” he says. “But it’s been good. And it's only getting better.”


End file.
